Book Self-Publishing: Why Writers Are Their Own Worst Enemies

The typical visual artist I know is the harshest critic of his or her own work. They will often refuse to show anyone until they think that they have achieved ‘perfection’.

Such an artist will often literally destroy his or her own work and start from scratch again even though professional artists looking at his or her work might have thought their pieces were fabulous.

This is not a characteristic that I have observed with writers who have pursued self-publishing and that’s why so many fail on achieving the success that they had envisioned.

Writers who go the typical trade publishing route know that it is very difficult to get published by the elites of the trade publishing world and will go that extra mile to perfect their manuscript.

However, typical writers who I have met who self-publish don’t seem to be very concerned about the actual quality of the product he or she has produced.

They also fail to value all of what goes into producing a professional book product after they have completed writing their manuscript.

Now with the access to all this “technology” which has made the ability to self-produce a book much easier, the typical writer boils down the production of a book simply to the slapping on of covers which they can now easily achieve through such services as CreateSpace.

And, after CreateSpace gets their money, why should they care about the quality of the products that their services are producing – especially when the writer is so much in love with themselves for having produced “a book”?

When reality sets in and the writer ends up not selling as much as they like, they boil everything down to a “marketing issue”, i.e. “if only I had better marketing, I would sell tons of books.”

I hate to tell you but, “Wrong!”

When you begin to try to tell such writers about all the problems about their book they usually get either immediately dismissive or angry.

“They [whoever “they” are] just don’t like me because they know I’m self-published” among other rationales that self-published writers resort to.

When a corporate trade publisher produces a book, there are a lot of quality control mechanisms which ensure a professionally designed book.

Writers who seek to market a book which has not been professionally edited and designed to corporate trade standards are often wasting their money.

David Carnoy estimates that a whopping 98% of self-published writers produce really crappy books. These books are basically like designing a car which resembles a huge shoe box with car wheels and a steering wheel with a motorcycle engine and calling it a “car”.

One of the biggest failings of self-publishing writers are horrific typesetting and amateur layout / design. The need for better editing is also a failing among writers. Another big failing is a terrible book cover which from the get-go makes the book look like an amateur job.

I have met tons of writers who thought that his or her book cover was 200% perfect, when it was in my view a total garbage job which would guarantee poor sales and no media interest.

A wise writer should always get a professional opinion from a professional book publishing agency like AgoraPublishing.com if a writer aspires to making tons of sales.

AgoraPublishing.com is a not-for-profit book self-publishing corporation which seeks to empower writers with advice and the production of high quality books. They have been online longer than CreateSpace. A service like Agora’s will make sure that you will not waste time and money trying to market a self-published book that fails professional book publishing standards.